The Guinness Book of Records once claimed that the number π to a million decimal places, printed in full and bound in book form, was the Most Boring Book in the World. To the uninitiated, the Department of Trade Returns of U.K. life offices must seem to be in the same class, and when I chose the topic I wondered if this might affect the welcome which this paper would receive. For anyone with a professional interest in life offices, however, the Returns are too important to ignore. They contain the greatest amount of published data on the U.K. life assurance industry, they form an essential prop of our liberal supervisory system and they ought to be a line of defence against tighter controls.

Life assurance has always been unusual in attracting long term contractual savings in large amounts. This was even more true a century ago than it is today, as there were no great pension funds or unit trusts. Human nature being what it is, this led some to view life assurance with more enthusiasm than sense. The mid-nineteenth century saw numerous small life offices set up, many of which were soon in trouble and it became common for such offices to be taken over by others. This was not so bad when the business was transferred to a larger, sounder office but quite often the new proprietor was an office in no better state than that taken over.